Dance: Three Premieres by the Frankfurt Ballet

By ANNA KISSELGOFF, Special to the New York Times

Published: July 18, 1987

PURCHASE, N.Y., July 16—
One can imagine the field day William Forsythe will have with the Iran-contra hearings. How language functions, how the same words are redefined to assume different meaning -these are issues that the 38-year-old American choreographer is exploring in the Frankfurt Ballet.

One of the unexpectedly entertaining three premieres in the West German company's second program at the Pepsico Summerfare festival here tonight was even inspired, if that's the word, by last year's American bombing of Tripoli, Libya. ''Skinny,'' co-choreographed by Mr. Forsythe with Amanda Miller, turns out to be the most powerful work in the Frankfurt's United States debut season.

Social protest or at least a social critique was usually at the heart of Mr. Forsythe's earlier works. Even today the linguistic structures he transposes to his choreography to create analogies between dance idioms and spoken language are often at the service of social commentary.

In his most formal experiments, Mr. Forsythe makes dance the subject of his investigation, and the result can make for richly inventive choreography.

Yet the breakdown of language or the way its components can be recombined often signify, in Mr. Forsythe's view, the state of health in a society. Structures in language as applied to culture make for Structuralism. This is what Mr. Forsythe is telling us sub rosa in his ballets.

The view from Frankfurt in the company's new mixed bill, which is repeated again on Saturday night at the State University of New York campus, is decidedly critical. All three local premieres on this program zeroed in on the premises many in the audience might take for granted. These ranged from our acceptance of toothbrushes to our acceptance of international disasters.

All the same, Mr. Forsythe is a great entertainer. He uses a New Wave technology any rock group might envy. He is his own sophisticated lighting designer, and his new musical collaborator, the Dutch composer Tom Willems, knows how to make a rock beat sound classical. Most in the audience said they enjoyed these pieces.

Does this mean that those criticized did not understand that they were being criticized? Ambiguity is not Mr. Forsythe's game - and playing games with his audience is a commonplace in his works. When he criticizes pop culture, he turns pop imagery in upon itself.

The three short works on view here are pungent essays, not all on the same level of significance. ''Big White Baby Dog'' is choreographed around ''Empty Speech,'' a text by the American poet Anne Waldman. Civilization and its discontents are emphasized by the accents placed in a recitation by Kathleen Fitzgerald, who scoots around with doll-like propulsion. Among the phrases she enunciates with clipped tones are ''Empty glass elevators'' ''Empty living expenses,'' ''Empty Orlando, Fla.'' You get the picture.

Or maybe you don't. For while Mr. Forsythe is playing Sinclair Lewis to the Babbit-culture of our time, his dancers are moving quickly and vibrantly. In this case, they were Daniela Malusardi, Hilde Koch and Mayra Rodriguez in sarong-type outfits by Holly Brubach. These children of nature were ringed by five men in striped puffed shorts and in whiteface - Christopher Mason Johnson, Andrew Levinson, Robert Medina, Anthony Rizzi and Glen Tuggle.

Nicholas Champion was presumably the man who emerged from a white-sheet costume as the dog of the title, although he looked more like the abominable snowman. Carrying household utensils around, the dancers also had time for classwork chorography made vital - especially in a passage when they clicked their heels in opposite directions like a living pendulum.

''Same Olde Story'' had Mr. Champion interviewing Miss Fitzgerald, both seated at a table, in what proved to be a composite fairy-tale autobiography. Little Red Riding Hood had porridge on her dress as well as two sisters and went to sleep for 100 years, as we learned. Mr. Willems's pounding beat and overlay of distorted harmonicalike sound were especially well integrated into the dancing. The women in black leotards and toe shoes and the men, also in black, entered one by one from the wings, repeating a dance phrase focusing on wide leg swings from the raised knee.

There is no need to attempt to relate the choreography to the talking in ''Skinny.'' Everything comes together here. Two women, joined by two men, each saw away at a violin placed against a bare leg - a quartet of Neros fiddling while Rome burns.

Crowds of dancers, all clad in a ragtag collection of shorts and tops, rush in a dazzling mosaic of patterns. Alarm takes on an abstract beauty of its own. Here again the spoken word is re-emphasized through retelling to acquire new meaning. A parody text of a travel promotion (by Mr. Forsythe and Miss Fitzgerald) ends up as a sneering warning that what is bad today will look terrific next year.

Hardly a classical work, the piece is alive with street energy as the dancers pass down pails to put out the invisible fire that finally glows with an orange light from the wings. With their hands in ear-shaped hand gestures flapping above their heads or their stamping clapping rites, the dancers are always terrific. Mr. Forsythe and Miss Miller have captured our age of anxiety.